Wednesday, July 6, 2011

This delicious breakfast strata with spinach and Gruyere was served at a bridal shower I recently attended. Baked in a square casserole dish, it comes out of the oven brimming with bubbly cheese. Not only did we bridesmaids enjoy it during the bridal shower brunch, we also pulled it out again at 1 am for a post-partying snack.

It's a good thing the bride's mother was so nice to share the recipe with me because I just can't get enough of it. It's fantastic.

Stratas, not to be confused with frittatas (egg-based dishes like big baked omelettes) or quiches (egg-based dishes in pastry shells), are characterized by their baked layers of bread and cheese, and an egg custard sauce. It's sort of like a savory bread pudding I guess.

This recipe calls for dried or toasted slices of French bread. To save some time and also to avoid turning on the oven, I just sliced the bread a day before use and left the slices on a baking sheet in the cold oven overnight to dry out. You want to make sure to use dried-out bread so that it gives your strata some structure.

After resting a night in the fridge, the strata can be pulled out of the fridge, baked and be ready to serve within 1 hour and 20 minutes, which makes it a great dish to serve guests for a weekend brunch. All the mess and clean-up can be done the day before.

One more note, though the recipe calls for 8 tablespoons of butter  I was able to get away with just 4 tablespoons.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

My dear friend Betsy made an amazing recipe (for her, at least) for salmon that uses a parchment packet and fresh citrus fruit. The way she described it sounded so good, I demanded the recipe for this so-called Citrus Salmon in Parchment.

Unfortunately, the recipe didn't turn out so well for me when I tried it. I think I must have royally messed this one up somehow because my fish turned out pretty bland and overcooked.

Here are my step-by-step photos. Why don't you give it a whirl and let me know if it works for you... Find the recipe at AllRecipes.com here.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

After turning my kitchen upside down, dirtying a bazillion bowls and utensils, and spending 4 hours to create this monster, this Sweet and Salty cake (a salted caramel chocolate cake) turned out to be one extremely fussy and topsy turvy ugly-ass cake.

The recipe comes from the cookbook Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. The photo of the cake in the book looked gorgeous (of course), with layers of rich dark chocolate cake and neat layers of frosting in between. Mine ... not so much. Check out how hideous it turned out:

Though the cake tasted pretty good, it really wasn't worth the effort. I'm not even going to post the recipe for it. I'm so mad at it.

Friday, June 3, 2011

I've just completed my first attempt at vegan cooking ... and it wasn't so bad. I found it's like cooking vegetarian, but also forgoing cheese and butter along with the meat.

The recipe for these vegan enchiladas with avocado cream comes from the blog Oh She Glows. Stuffed with a filling of cooked sweet potatoes, spinach, black beans, onions, and bell peppers, these were sort of like baked burritos.

They are healthy, they taste that way. They're not something you gush about how spectacular they taste. They're simple ... and that's OK because sometimes you just want it that way.

I'm not sure if I'd make the enchiladas again, but the avocado cream served on the side is a keeper. Who needs sour cream when this avocado stuff is just as creamy and is so much more flavorful?

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

After seeing Ina Garten make these indulgent, cheesy, poofy, giant Cheddar-Dill Scones on her TV show Barefoot Contessa, I immediately jumped online, printed the recipe, and baked some up.

Yep, I'll confirm that they taste as good as they look on TV.

They're so soft and cheesy straight out of the oven, it's hard to resist eating more than one. If you only want to make eight scones, you can halve the recipe easily. The full recipe makes 16 of these bad boys. (Each are about the size of your hand.)

Friday, May 27, 2011

A beautiful creamy orange color and highlighted with bright pieces of red bell pepper, this African Curried Coconut Soup with Chickpeas is as yummy as it is pretty. It's filled with veggies and warm, spicy flavors like curry and cayenne.

A few changes I made to the recipe:

Instead of fresh tomatoes, I just used a can of petite diced tomatoes.

To make it lighter, I didn't use rice, but added some broccoli to amp up the veggie content some more.

I used chicken broth in place of the vegetable broth.

Missing an extra kick, I added Sriracha sauce for some sweat-inducing heat.

Try it if you have some time to kill this Memorial Day weekend.

Coming up soon: I'll be sharing recipes for Cheddar Dill Scones and Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake. Start dieting now. (Looks like those Green Monsters I was making earlier this week have been overtaken by my obsession with baking up fatty treats, eh?)

Thursday, May 19, 2011

These muffins are wicked healthy. In fact, a bit too healthy. I had to eat them with honey or a slather of almond butter to make them taste sweeter. The texture was nice and hearty due to the oats, but the muffins just weren't sweet enough to be enjoyable. You'll rarely ever see me do this to a recipe, but next time I'll be adding sugar.

Despite the issue with the sweetness, these are definitely salvageable! I love how these muffins include steel cut oats, buckwheat, and blueberries. Eating one of these is like eating oatmeal, buckwheat blueberry pancakes, and a muffin for breakfast all at once. They pack quite the nutritional punch per muffin.